Jeremy Gray, for PetaPixel: VSCO is running a campaign built around a letter from CEO Eric Wittman that pushes back against the idea that generated images make the photographer obsolete.

“Your eye, the way you see the world, can’t be generated. It can’t be prompted. It’s irreplaceable.”

The letter names the pressures: platforms that bury original work in reels, brands that would rather skip the shoot and generate the image instead, and the steady drumbeat telling working photographers to give up. VSCO’s answer is blunt: real work made by real people has never mattered more.

They’ve also shipped AI features in their own product. The distinction they’re drawing is that the tools can handle the drudgery; the eye that decides what matters in the frame cannot be faked later.

The campaign pairs photographers working in both digital and film, documenting each other. It’s not a rejection of technology. It’s a reminder that the part worth paying for — or looking at twice — is the one decision no prompt can outsource.

No one but you is behind the lens.